Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The newspaper story was sensational – in all sense of the word. The tale is incredible and written in the era when journalism meant whatever sold papers, truth be damned.

But the story is about an underground city and giants in the Midwest, so it’s worth telling again.

It happened on the pages of the April 9, 1885 edition of The New York Times in a story entitled: “Missouri’s buried city: A strange discovery in a coal mine near Moberly.” Moberly, the largest city in Randolph County, had a population of 6,108 in the 1880s.

Coal miners, sinking a shaft 360 feet deep, broke into a cavern revealing “a wonderful buried city,” the article claimed. Lava arches stretched across the roof of the cavern, looming over the streets of an ancient city “which are regularly laid out and enclosed by walls of stone, which is cut and dressed in a fairly good, although rude style of masonry.”

Workers, along with Moberly city recorder David Coates and Moberly city marshal George Keating, inspected the site, found a 30-by-100-feet hall in the cavern filled with stone benches and hand tools.

Explorers discovered a stone fountain in a wide court, still pouring “perfectly pure water” into its basin. But it was what lay beside the fountain that interested the people exploring the site.

“Lying beside the foundation (of the fountain) were portions of the skeleton of a human being,” according to the article. “The bones of the leg measured, the femur four and one-half feet, the tibia four feet and three inches, showing that when alive the figure was three times the size of an ordinary man, and possessed of a wonderful muscular power and quickness.”

Its skull, the story reported, was shattered; bronze tools, granite hammers, metallic saws and flint knives were scattered all around. “They are not so highly polished, nor so accurately made as those now finished by our best mechanics, but they show skill and an evidence of an advanced civilization that are very wonderful,” according to the article.

Explorers spent 12 hours in the buried city and resurfaced only after the oil in their lamps burned low.

“No end to the wonders of the discovery was reached,” the article stated. “A further extended search will be made in a day or two.”

No record of the extended search could be found.

Dr. Tom Spencer, a professor in the department of History, Humanities, Philosophy and Political Science at Northwest Missouri State University, said that’s because after printing the story, the newspapers tried to forget it.

“A lot of the time I think these stories were written based entirely off hearsay and little or no direct on-site reporting,” he said. “As the story grew, the details got more and more outrageous.”

He equates it to a childhood game where children sit in a circle and one child whispers a story into another’s ear and by the time the story completes the circle, it was completely different.

“The point of this exercise was to try to see what would happen when the story had made it all the way around the circle,” he said. “If you recall, sometimes the ‘finished story’ bore little resemblance to the original story. My guess is one element of this story is factual – like the strange shaft formation or a long femur was found – and it became more and more embellished as it went around the journalistic circle at the time.”

So what happened to the fabulous buried city under Moberly, Mo.?

“There were stories like this periodically at the time and they usually disappear quietly because someone goes to investigate and there’s nothing to it,” Spencer said. “In order to avoid the embarrassment the newspapers just don’t say anything else about it.”

Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Tammy Thomas was about 10 years old when the growling thing came into her home.

Her uncle and new aunt brought their newborn to Tammy’s house for a visit and unwittingly brought something with them. Tammy blames it on the mother of her new aunt who practiced black magic and devil worship.

“The mother had given my uncle’s wife some yarn to make a blanket for her and my uncle’s new baby,” Tammy said. “They had been at our house one evening and when they left they forgot that baby blanket. We didn’t realize it at the time. Soon after that we began having all kinds of weird things happen around the house.”

Scratching sounds came from inside the walls and deep growling would haunt Tammy’s nights. Her entire family would hear people having conversations in the dining room and den after everyone had gone to bed. But to Tammy, the growling thing was more personal.

“I was awakened several nights with what sounded like someone whispering or growling in my ear,” she said.

The growling dragged Tammy from sleep one night and, when it stopped, she could hear voices from the dining room.

“Some neighbors had been over at the house playing cards with my mom and stepdad,” she said. “The dining room was right next to my bedroom and that is where they always played cards. Well this night I woke up and heard voices from the dining room and thought it was my parents and the neighbors still playing cards.”

A faint light shown through a crack in Tammy’s door, so she slid out of bed to see what the adults were doing.

“As soon as I opened the door the talking stopped and it went dark again,” she said. “I thought I had been dreaming so I went back to bed.”

But as Tammy dozed off, the room grew unnaturally cold.

“It was summer and was always extremely hot in that bedroom,” she said. “I was freezing cold and could not go back to sleep.”

Then she saw what caused the cold – the growling thing was in her room.

“Something made me look up at the top of the door and I saw a dark gray mist and in that mist was a face,” she said. “The face had huge black eyes and it was making a sound that was like a growl or a sinister chuckle is the only way I can describe it.”

Lying in bed staring at the face in the mist, Tammy suddenly knew she wasn’t asleep.

“After a few seconds when I realized that I wasn’t dreaming and was really seeing that face I started screaming,” she said. “My mom and stepdad and brother all came running into the room and from the looks on their faces I knew that they had seen something, too.”

But what was it, and why was it in Tammy’s house?

“As my parents started trying to figure out what may have brought this demon into our house my mother realized that the baby blanket was there in the house and that all the scary things started right after the blanket was left there,” Tammy said.

They telephoned her uncle who rushed to the house. He and Tammy’s brother put the blanket in the trunk of her uncle’s car.

“They were going to throw that blanket in the river,” she said.

But whatever inhabited the blanket didn’t like this.

“On their way to the river the trunk of the car flew open for no reason,” she said. “They got it closed and took off again but then the brakes went out on the car and they started hearing a scratching and growling coming from the trunk of the car.”

They pulled the car to a stop on a bridge, dark water rushing beneath them, and opened the trunk.

“My uncle put lighter fluid on the blanket lit it on fire and threw it off the bridge,” she said. “As the blanket was burning and falling from the bridge my brother and my uncle heard horrible loud screaming coming from the blanket. After the blanket was gone we had no more experiences of those kinds in that house.”

Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s book of ghost stories, “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” is here. Order online at: tsup.truman.edu, www.amazon.com, or visit Jason’s Web site at www.jasonoffutt.com.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

As Nita Hiltner, 22, sat before a Ouija board in the early 1970s, hands pressed to the planchette, she thought of the only story she’d ever heard about the board.

“My previous experience with one was about my friend whose mother did the Ouija board during the Korean War and found out her husband, my friend’s father, who was an Air Force pilot, was killed,” she said. “That is what the Ouija board said, and a couple days later, she found out it was true.”

A friend worked with her, fingertips also resting on the plastic triangle as it began to skitter across the board. Then something happened Hiltner hadn’t expected – the board worked.

“I did a Ouija board only once, and with an older friend,” she said. “I asked if I had lived before and it said, ‘yes.’”

Both women stared at the “toy,” sold by the toy company Parker Brothers since 1966, as the loose triangle moved without their effort.

“I know neither of us was moving the plate, or whatever it is called,” Hiltner said. “We were barely touching it.”

After the board told the two Hiltner had a past life, Hiltner probed for more information.

“I asked when I was born before, and it said 1757,” she said. “I don’t think I asked where, but I asked my name, and it said Francine or Frances Oakley.”

Then the conversation turned dark.

“This is where it gets weird,” Hiltner said. “I asked it what I did for a living, and it answered ‘tart.’ Now, I did not know what that meant, but my friend laughed and laughed, and I asked why, and she told me that meant I was a prostitute.”

Concerned and insulted, Hiltner decided she’d had enough and took her hands from the planchette.

“I know some Christians say this is the devil’s work and that it would say something like that to degrade you so I considered that as to whether this was all true or a lie,” she said. “But, I had no idea at that point what that word meant. I learned something that day.”

Decades later, the Ouija’s words came back when Hiltner met someone online she may have known before.

“I met my husband,” she said. “It felt like destiny because I was going through a divorce, and not long before I met him, I was saying to myself how unfair it seemed that my ex had someone and I had no one. We wouldn’t have met if (her usual online haunt) hadn’t gone down. We were the only ones online that night, it was late, so I said, ‘hi,’ and we began talking from there.”

Their online communication and attachment grew, and one night she asked him if he thought he’d lived before.

“Now, he was in Philadelphia and I was in California and this discussion was on the computer,” she said. “He answered, ‘yes.’ I asked of all the times that had existed, when had he lived before and he said 1700s, and I am thinking ‘1700s’ before he typed it.”

As she typed her next question, for some reason unknown to her, she thought the word “Boston.”

“I asked him where of all places in the world did he live at that time,” she said. “And a few seconds later, he typed ‘Boston.’”

Hiltner and the man are now married, and she still wonders if the information given to her by the Ouija board more than 35 years ago is true.

“I have tried to research the name I was given with the Ouija board, and I haven’t found anything, yet,” she said. “But I am almost certain I will find that name someplace.”

Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

You can get Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at www.amazon.com.

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Yvonne Steele, 57, awoke in her bed in New Lebanon, Ohio, and got up to use the bathroom. She knew it was 3 a.m. because she looked at the clock. She’d soon start looking at the clock a lot.

“When I lay back down in bed, I looked up and there stood a man in a long black coat with a black top hat on,” Steele said. “He was dressed as if he stepped out of the late 1800s.”

The man had a handlebar moustache and reddish hair.

“He was a nice-looking man who appeared to be in his late 40s,” she said. “He stood there looking down at me and said, ‘We use it to haul people around. It is not a car and not a bus. It is a combination car and bus so we will call it a cab. That makes sense to me.’”

The man then turned and walked out Steele’s bedroom door. As she lie in bed, wondering what just happened, a thought kept naggingt her.

“I thought to myself, ‘it makes sense to me, too,’” she said. “I was not alarmed by seeing him and was not afraid at all. I thought it was strange, but went to sleep.”

The next morning she told her mother about the encounter.

“When I said he was wearing a long black coat, she looked at me and said, ‘was he wearing a top hat like Abraham Lincoln?’” Steele said. “I just looked at her in disbelief and said, ‘yes.’”

One night when Steele’s two brothers were about six and 10 years old, they were lying in bed and saw the same entity standing in their room – and, individually, they told their mother.

“Neither of them were afraid of him and each did not know the other saw him until years later when they were discussing it,” she said. “No one had ever said anything to me, but when I began telling the story, my mom immediately knew it had to be the same guy.”

The house where Steele lives is on the same property where her family’s former home stood. She is sure it was the same entity her brother’s saw.

“I have never believed in the ‘other side,’ but I did see this man and have no explanation for it,” she said.

A few days after Steele’s encounter, something else happened that she can’t explain.

“An antique clock that sits on my dresser chimed 3 o’clock one morning,” she said. “The clock is over 150 years old and when I went to bed the night before it was on 1 o’clock where it has been for years. When I woke up the next morning it said 3 o’clock.”

The pendulum is not attached to the clock so Steele doesn’t know how the time could have changed.

“I do not believe in ghosts and yet this happened to me,” she said. “I have no explanation for this and a friend of mine who does believe in the spirit world informed me that it was a spirit trying to tell me something, though I don’t know what. If I had to give a description of this man to a sketch artist I could. I remember him and how he looked as if he were standing in front of me right now.”

Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

You can get Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at www.amazon.com.

About Me

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author, college journalism instructor, and fan of all things strange. His books about the paranormal, "Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters," "What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal In Your Backyard," "Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us," and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri's Most Spirited Spots,” are available at www.amazon.com.
Jason is available for interviews, speaking engagements and beer festivals. E-mail all serious inquiries to: shadowpeoplebook@gmail.com.